Mankind! Ah! thou hadst been the terror long,
And murderer, of all of woman born.
None could escape thee! In thy dungeon house,
Where darkness dwelt, and putrid loathsomeness,
And fearful silence, villanously still,
And all of horrible and deadly name,—
Thou satst, from age to age, insatiate,
And drank the blood of men, and gorged their flesh,
And with thy iron teeth didst grind their bones
To powder, treading out, beneath thy feet,
Their very names and memories. The blood
Of nations could not slake thy parched throat.
No bribe could buy thy favour for an hour,
Or mitigate thy ever-cruel rage
For human prey. Gold, beauty, virtue, youth,
Even helpless, swaddled innocency, failed
To soften thy heart of stone! the infant's blood
Pleased well thy taste, and, while the mother wept,
Bereaved by thee, lonely and waste in wo,
Thy ever-grinding jaws devoured her too.
Each son of Adam's family beheld,
Where'er he turned, whatever path of life
He trode, thy goblin form before him stand,
Like trusty old assassin, in his aim
Steady and sure as eye of destiny,
With sithe, and dart, and strength invincible,
Equipped, and ever menacing his life.
He turned aside, he drowned himself in sleep,
In wine, in pleasure; travelled, voyaged, sought
Receipts for health from all he met; betook
To business, speculate, retired; returned
Again to active life, again retired;
Returned, retired again; prepared to die,
Talked of thy nothingness, conversed of life
To come, laughed at his fears, filled up the cup,
Drank deep, refrained; filled up, r refrained again;
Planned, built him round with splendour, won applause,
Made large alliances with men and things,
Read deep in science and philosophy,
To fortify his soul; heard lectures prove
The present ill, and future good; observed
His pulse beat regular, extended hope;
Thought, dissipated thought, and thought again;
Indulged, abstained, and tried a thousand schemes,
To ward thy blow, or hide thee from his eye;
But still thy gloomy terrors, dipped in sin,
Before him frowned, and withered all his joy.
Still, feared and hated thing! thy ghostly shape
Stood in his avenues of fairest hope;
Unmannerly and uninvited, crept
Into his haunts of most select delight.
Still, on his halls of mirth, and banqueting,
And revelry, thy shadowy hand was seen
Writing thy name of Death. Vile worm, that gnawed
The root of all his happiness terrene, the gall
Of all his sweet, the thorn of every rose
Of earthly bloom, cloud of his noon-day sky,
Frost of his spring, sigh of his loudest laugh,
Dark spot on every form of loveliness,
Rank smell amidst his rarest spiceries,
Harsh dissonance of all his harmony,
Reserve of every promise, and the if
Of all to-morrows !-now, beyond thy vale,
Stood all the ransomed multitude of men,
Immortal all: and, in their visions, saw
Thy visage grim no more. Great payment day!
Of all thou ever conquered, none was left
In thy unpeopled realms, so populous once.
He, at whose girdle hang the keys of death,
And life, not bought but with the blood of Him
Who wears, the eternal Son of God, that morn,
Dispelled the cloud that sat so long, so thick,
So heavy o'er thy vale; opened all thy doors,
Unopened before; and set thy prisoners free.
Vain was resistance, and to follow vain.
In thy unveiled caves, and solitudes
Of dark and dismal emptiness, thou satst,
Rolling thy hollow eyes, disabled thing!
Helpless, despised, unpitied, and unfeared,
Like some fallen tyrant, chained in sight of all
The people; from thee dropped thy pointless dart,
Thy terrors withered all, thy ministers,
Annihilated, fell before thy face,
And on thy maw eternal Hunger seized.
Nor yet, sad monster! wast thou left alone. In thy dark dens some phantoms still remained,— Ambition, Vanity, and earthly Fame, Swollen Ostentation, meagre Avarice, Mad Superstition, smooth Hypocrisy, And Bigotry intolerant, and Fraud, And wilful Ignorance, and sullen Pride, Hot Controversy, and the subtle ghost Of vain Philosophy, and worldly Hope, And sweet-lipped, hollow-hearted Flattery. All these, great personages once on earth, And not unfollowed, nor unpraised, were left, Thy ever-unredeemed, and with thee driven To Erebus, through whose uncheered wastes, Thou mayest chase them, with thy broken sithe Fetching vain strokes, to all eternity, Unsatisfied, as men who, in the days Of Time, their unsubstantial forms pursued.
REANIMATED, now, and dressed in robes
Of everlasting wear, in the last pause
Of expectation, stood the human race,
Buoyant in air, or covering shore and sea,
From east to west, thick as the eared grain,
In golden autumn waved, from field to field,
Profuse, by Nilus' fertile wave, while yet
Earth was, and men were in her valleys seen
Still, all was calm in heaven. Nor yet appeared The Judge, nor aught appeared, save here and there On wing of golden plumage borne at will, A curious angel, that from out the skies Now glanced a look on man, and then retired. As calm was all on earth. The ministers Of God's unsparing vengeance, waited, still Unbid. No sun, no moon, no star, gave light A blessed and holy radiance, travelled far From day original, fell on the face Of men, and every countenance revealed; Unpleasant to the bad, whose visages Had lost all guise of seeming happiness, With which on earth such pains they took to hide Their misery in. On their grim features, now
The plain, unvisored index of the soul,
The true, untampered witness of the heart,
No smile of hope, no look of vanity
Beseeching for applause, was seen; no scowl
Of self-important, all-despising pride,
That once upon the poor and needy fell,
Like winter on the unprotected flower,
Withering their very being to decay.
No jesting mirth, no wanton leer, was seen,
No sullen lower of braggart fortitude
Defying pain, nor anger, nor revenge;
But fear instead, and terror, and remorse;
And chief, one passion, to its answering, shaped
The features of the damned, and in itself
Summed all the rest,-unutterable despair.
What on the righteous shone of foreign light, Was all redundant day, they needed not. For as, by nature, Sin is dark, and loves The dark, still hiding from itself in gloom, And in the darkest hell is still itself The darkest hell, and the severest wo, Where all is wo; so Virtue, ever fair!
Doth by a sympathy as strong as binds
Two equal hearts, well pleased in wedded love, For ever seek the light, for ever seek
All fair and lovely things, all beauteous forms, All images of excellence and truth;
And from her own essential being, pure
As flows the fount of life that spirits drink,
Doth to herself give light, nor from her beams,
As native to her as her own existence,
Can be divorced, nor of her glory shorn,—
Which now, from every feature of the just,
Divinely rayed, yet not from all alike;
In measure, equal to the soul's advance
In virtue, was the lustre of the face.
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